Wow. This is the start of a tectonic shift in the computer industry. However, I don't know about you guys, but as a home user, I don't have much need/interest in being able to boot Windows Xp. I'm not anti-MS or anything, I just want to keep things simple on my machine and stick to Mac OS. I was a bit reluctant to switch, but I decided to take the plunge. I figured I could switch back with my next computer if need be. Now that I've been running Mac OS, I love it and don't see any great need (currently) for Windows. I think some of the nebulous crowd of people who apparently like Apple but are reluctant to switch (constantly referrred to in news articles) would be pleasantly surprised to find that things work out just fine if they took the plunge like I did.

I know what you're saying. I really don't have the need for a dual-boot system at the present time, but it's good to know that option will be there in the future. I need to get an Intel Mac first anyways.

Windows sure is getting a lot of press since Apple switched to Intel. First it was the 14k contest, and now this. I wonder if the general observer thinks Mac users want to run Windows instead of OS X? You know, this could backfire for Apple as far as bringing over new people.

I think customers will enjoy the change to buy beautiful equipment without having to have a steep learning curve

I agree. I think this will give people the incentive to finally dive into a Mac. Whether it's a beginners Mac Mini or they simply want a beautiful all-in-one iMac. Most people that will buy a Mac for this purpose, probably will end up using Mac OS X and might just like it more anyways.
This will also give another incentive for those who've been wanting a Mac for work, but haven't been able to due to certain programs exclusive to Windoze.

........
well it can be a cheap way into Mac. A Mac Mini with boot camp will help justify a Mac's cost to quite a few. Especially it is likely that they will have all the necessary equipment for a Mini._________________

I don't think it will backfire. Apple has always been a hardware company first. I think customers will enjoy the change to buy beautiful equipment without having to have a steep learning curve.

If anything, it's going to hurt sales for Dell, Gateway and HP.

You could be right. People might look at from this viewpoint...... "I get the nice looking hardware, good support, and can always go back to using Windows if things don't work out with OS X." It's really hard to say what Windows users are thinking these days. I mean after all, they are "Windows" users.

Quote:

But as I was telling my co-worker (I posted this on another thread), the more and more I want to load XP on my new Mac Min, the more and more I come up with the question.....

Why?

Couldn't agree more! The only thing I can think of is Photoshop! At least it's running at full speed!

1) I program PICs where the programing software and PIC programmer itself work pretty much exclusively on Windows. It *does* work in VirtualPC but like anything in VirtualPC, it's dog slow.

2) Games. After XP is installed and updated, I'm installing Battlefield 2 to see how the heck this thing plays with the integrated graphics chip.

Update when everything is up and running. So far, very very smooth going. Apple has done an impressive job with this. Given the amount of time that it takes to release something like this publicly (even in Beta), I'm guessing that they've been working on this for a while._________________-Jh

Maybe I'm out of touch, but don't programmers usually need a parallel port?

Second, which PIC are you using, and why?

Actually, it's DB9 serial. I use the Keyspan adapter which, again, works under VirtualPC, but this should speed things along. Would love to talk about what I'm working on, but not quite ready yet.

Update
XP installed now. Installed drivers and rebooted. Looks like everything is up and running just fine (what's supported anyway). Man, I forgot how much driver installation is a PITA in WindowsXP. Yuck. Scary to hear the XP "piano chime" come out of my Mini._________________-Jh

Sorry to say that Battlefield2 won't launch. I updated to BF2 1.22 and got all the XP updates. If anyone else tries some games, let us know. Would be good to know what works and doesn't work._________________-Jh

You might be interested in this eWeek article; it talks about some of the advantages and disadvantages of FAT32 and NTFS running on Bootcamp. eWeek used NTFS in their test. All this about Bootcamp is very interesting and I'm following it closely, but ultimately, for the reasons stated in the article, a virtualization solution that allows both operating systems to work at the same time, would be much better for most Mac users (including me)._________________Mini 1 (2012): 2.3 ghz Core i7; 10gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500gb Seagate XT
Mini 2 (2009): 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8gb RAM, 500gb SSD running Ubuntu
Also a 13" MacBook Air, 21.5" i5 iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu, openSUSE & Crunchbang